


A Prospect of Being

by newyorktopaloalto



Category: Gypsies Tramps and Thieves - Cher (Song)
Genre: Family, Found Family, Gen, Growing Up, Introspection, Nature, Travel
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-05-17
Updated: 2019-05-17
Packaged: 2020-03-05 16:28:27
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,112
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/18832357
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/newyorktopaloalto/pseuds/newyorktopaloalto
Summary: Dasha had grown up on the road, her family large and their show a constant. (There's always an end to the halcyon days).





	A Prospect of Being

**Author's Note:**

  * For [sweetcarolanne](https://archiveofourown.org/users/sweetcarolanne/gifts).



> Disclaimer: This is a work of fiction based on the song 'Gypsies Tramps and Thieves' by Cher. I own neither the song nor the background concept. 
> 
> Thank you so much for reading, and I hope that you enjoy! I loved your prompts for this, and I wanted to do it as much justice as I could. <3

Dasha's memories were a forest. Labyrinthine and flourishing, her mind wove the pathways that her legs had taken—the show had traveled to hundreds of locations that Dasha could remember, and the locations had blurred until her entire life had seemed nothing more than a sprawling, technicolor, exuberant camp at the treeline, a town below them, quiet, quaint, and wary. The travelers were wary, too, and Dasha had always been told by her mother, her grandfather, and even the fortune teller, Madam Karovsky (whose age Dasha had never been able to accurately guess; her mother knew Madam Karovsky's age, Dasha was certain, but she would always just smile, mysterious, and wink as though telling would be a terrible crime) to never give out her name if asked. This was, Dasha had been told by Old Maurice, the show's barker, one of the rules they all lived by, no matter how old, how young, or how new they were to the show. 

Despite the hesitancy in forming outside relationships (a sound idea considering they always seemed to go awry at even the smallest hints of unease) the show always had enough interest to sustain itself into the encroaching future. The success was, Dasha believed, in large part to Old Maurice, whose barking skills seemed to enchant even the customers who had, only hours before, been sneering in contempt at the set-up—no one knew how Old Maurice was able to gather so many people to the show night after night, the attraction of a traveling show less and less as the years spanned on, but Dasha assumed it was some sort of magic, old and grounding and bright, so they could all continue to live together, amongst nature and the ever expanding road. 

She would ask Old Maurice whether or not she would be doing this the rest of her life, like everyone else in her sprawling family, but he would just shake his head and say: 'something else, I know, is in your future. You'll know, too, when you find it.' (A secret: Old Maurice was the one who told the future, while Madam Karovsky just told you what she believed you needed to know, nothing more and nothing less). Dasha didn't know what could conceivably lure her away from the peace that came with lying in a hammock between two trees as a fine morning mist woke her up—the smell of slowly rising bread wafted from the camp, and someone had already started to make morning stew, hearty, rich, and nourishing; not allowed coffee, the smell had always sufficed well enough, and Dasha doubted the taste could compare.

* * *

'Can I change my destiny?' she had asked Old Maurice once, her toes barely brushing the soft grass as she swung slowly from a handmade swing. 

'Destiny is destiny, child,' Old Maurice had replied, looking up from the book he was reading—he always had that book in his coat pocket, title worn off from both the cover and the spine—to spare her a glance. 'It will always be.' 

(When Dasha asked her mother the same question, she had bent down to reach Dasha's height and, serious, solemn, searching, said 'yes,' before telling her to run along and go to see Katherine Little for her lessons).

* * *

They had arrived, dusk settling in around them as Dasha's grandfather looked around the field as though surveying his new land—which, in the most technical of ways, it would be, at least for however long they remained in this new, yet hauntingly familiar, town—and Dasha had been dealt an immensely important task by Vinny, the show's escape artist (the trick of his trade, he had explained to Dasha one evening as she tried to pick the lock off of the costume hold under his dutiful eye, was that you had to have both showmanship and ability, which was why all the greats had been both magicians and ambidextrous—Dasha didn't believe this to be true at all, but Vinny always had a way of talking that made you believe him, no matter how outrageous his claims). 

'Dasha,' he had said, placing both his hands on her shoulders as though sharing a confidence with her, “you must go into town with this money and find me a ring.” 

'For Anisha?' Dasha had asked, eyes wide as she was handed more money than she had ever seen in her life. 

'Yes, my little love, for Anisha. You will know the one—I would not. 

'Can I entrust this to you?' 

When Dasha nodded, she felt as though a transaction had taken place, as though she would be guided with Vinny's blessing, with the backing of the life they all lived (rooted, mobile, and bittersweet) and with her own innate sense of prescience for the people around her. Katherine Little had told her once, before she went onstage with a grin and a bow in her beard, that a promise was a sacred thing, something the universe listened to and absorbed with everything else everyone had done, was doing, and would ever do. (Her philosophy had seemed a little too grand for Dasha, who felt that nature, above all else, was the deciding factor).

* * *

The trees would whisper to her, sometimes, in the ways their leaves moved against one another, the ways the branches creaked and cracked in code, and Dasha would close her eyes to listen. 

'You hear it too,' Anisha had whispered, the light of the campfire low, her eyes flickering in its flitting embers. 

'I don't understand,' Dasha had lied, voice low as the the ground soaked her in. 

'You will.'

* * *

Madam Karovsky, bracelets jangling as she beckoned for Dasha to come over, had stared at her for a long while before sighing. There was no wind, and the sounds of the wildlife had disappeared, their calls lost in the silence. (There was never anything around Madam Karovsky—sometimes Dasha couldn't breathe in it, but sometimes it was the only way she could). 

'Child,' she had started, a croak in her voice that for the longest time Dasha had believed to be pure show—her mother had been the one to tell her otherwise, late one night, cuddled on the top of their room as they watched the lunar eclipse, 'life is never as it seems, it is never as you want. The sooner you understand this, the more prepared you will be.' 

Dasha had not noticed when her wrist had been caught in Madam Karovsky's long fingers, but she felt the absence when she had been let go. 

She had gone into the forest, then, hoping she could get lost—if only for a moment—but knowing it would never be possible. It was a stumbling, wretched hike, until Dasha reached a small clearing (a perfect circle) and understood. 

It didn't take her long to get back to the camp, a song in her throat echoing the ones she heard calling from the fire, and this time she felt the warmth as Madam Karovsky's fingers trapped her wrist, the pads brushing against her veins like a lungful of sweet, fresh air. 

'What happened?' she had asked, silence between them until the fire went low and Madam Karovsky's hair lost some of its ethereal luster. 

'Not what has, but what will.' 

'What will?' Dasha had not known, at that point, if she wanted the answer, but Madam Karovsky was never one to beat around the bush in regard to a question she wanted nothing more than to answer, and which was only given the most perfunctory of thought before being asked. 

'Oh, my child—only the rest of your life.'

* * *

'Are you trying to ruin us all?' 

The question had been overheard by Dasha one morning twilight, the camp still asleep for the performance later on in the day. 

'I'm trying to save us all. Petyr, the money is...' 

Her grandfather must have hushed Mikael, the owner of the show, as Dasha had not been able to make out anything further.

* * *

Dasha had met another girl once, her plaits smooth, her dress practically pristine. She had been crying—lost in the forest that Dasha had never before been to but knew as well as her home—and for a moment Dasha saw someone she could have been. (Disgust, then, had warred with desire, a lifelong ache of 'something else' merging with 'how could anyone live like that?' coalescing into a twist in her stomach that stopped her in her tracks). 

'Who are you?' Dasha had asked, her pose and her voice both almost unreasonably brash. 

'Elizabeth,' the girl had said, sniffling as she wiped at her eyes with the palm of one hand. After a moment she asked, 'Who are you?' 

The wind blew against Dasha's face, reminding her of what she must never do. Her throat clicked—she wanted to tell. 

'Me?' she had finally replied—light, vague, airy. 'I'm just a dream.'

* * *

There was a chill in the air, lingering and frigid—a harsh reminder of the approaching winter. It was unlikely to snow here, the southern west one of the last few haunts of travelers like themselves, (huddled together like an even poorer-man's version of _The Grapes of Wrath_ ) but the air still became cold enough to make even Dasha, always having been told she was a child of natural destiny, shiver. Not for the first time, she had wondered if living among perennials would have done her better than the deadened vegetation that wilted from late September to early February. 

'Mama.' Her whisper had been almost imperceptible to the lightly slumbering woman, and Dasha had watched as her mother startled upon awakening and seeing Dasha, eyes wide and lips curled down, staring into her face. 

'Yes, my dove?' Her mother had asked her then, her voice a comforting scratch like usual. 

'George and Tom Campbell left.' 

Her mother sat up, the jeweled-tone blankets falling around her as she stood up from the pallet. Gesturing for Dasha to give her her robe, her mother had wrapped it tightly around herself (her hair was still wrapped up from the night, but Dasha had not said a word about it—she thought she looked absolutely beautiful, and absolutely grounded with sleep still clinging to her, trailing along-side as she made her way through her business) before she walked out of their home. 

Dasha followed. 

'When did they go?'

'A little while ago—they didn't say where they were heading.' 

'It is cold,' Dasha's mother replied, as though this would have answered any further questions Dasha might have had. (In some ways, it did, but it was not until later—Mikael counting out the bills, the food, the everything—that she fully understood what the cold and the monotony could do to a person who had never felt the call of the road, of nature and of movement, to begin with). 

Mikael had looked at Dasha's grandfather then, as though he had predicted something he never really wanted to come to pass.

* * *

'There's always an end.' 

Dasha had heard it all her life (it was the one fortune that both Madam Karovsky and Old Maurice could agree upon) but when Anisha had said it, her toes gripping the dirt as though it was the only thing keeping her there, Dasha thought that it was more likely than not to happen soon. 

'What happens after the end?' Dasha had asked. 

Anisha, radiant and kind, smiled down at her. 'The beginning.'

* * *

Dasha had taken one look around the forest and knew that this was going to be the place she was meant for. 

During supper she had been squirming, wanting to explore everything around her, wide-eyed and finally feeling like she was in a place she had never known. Old Maurice, seeing Dasha's thoughts swirl in the stew he was stirring, said, 'I think this might be a good place.' 

Her grandfather had stopped mid-word, her mother mid-bite. 

'I concur,' Madam Karovsky had said after a few moments (the forest had gone quiet around them, as though in anticipation) and she nodded towards Dasha in a motion that Dasha understood to be meaningful. 

'Dasha?' her mother had asked, waving off both Vinny's and Mikael's questions. 

'It's as though I've never been here. I could get lost.' 

Nodding, as though she had understood, her mother turned to the rest of the group. 

'This is a good a place as any.' 

'Yes,' Anisha had agreed easily, 'it will be a good place for the baby.' 

That was the end—Dasha could feel the ground quiver, the promise set in the earth, itself. (And that? Was the beginning).


End file.
